# pass password manager

41 Hacker News commenters recommended pass password manager and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (7 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Simple, stable command-line password manager storing gpg-encrypted files in git, so syncing and backup are easy. Common caveat: weak phone and Windows support.

## Why people recommend it

- Syncs and backs up via git (5 comments): "The 'pass' utility has git integration and encourages you to have a git remote somewhere to host a duplicate of your encrypted store." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50015504)) "It's a shell script that stores passwords in a git repository, containing one file per entry." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48224274)) "Use pass or gopass for all your CLI tokens and sync them via a private git repo." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877165))
- Used reliably for years (6 comments): "This is how I have been doing password management for over a decade with password store" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49485451)) "This has reduced my maintenance burden on my spouse's devices down to practically zero." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856971)) "I've been using pass ( https://www.passwordstore.org/ ) for years on multiple desktops" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49009540))
- Simple, short, stable design (4 comments): "It's short, pretty easy to read and likely in part because it's so simple, it's also very stable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47881402)) "since it is a local only tool, you don't really need to update it constantly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47882111)) "the upside of that design is that it tends to be very resilient" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459754))
- Encrypted files via gpg (4 comments): "Just a shell script wrapper to gpg and the passwords are encrypted files you can backup and sync anyway you want." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48185713)) "Pass encrypts all these files via gpg, for which I use a key stored on a Yubikey." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46077667)) "my "offline" yubikey can be brought in whenever i want to decrypt the passwords" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49009805))

## What people warn about

- Account and entry names visible (3 comments): "the fact that all of your account names are visible in the clear is a deal breaker for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48224950)) "Some of them have critical metadata leakage issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47106025)) "pass does not encrypt entry names" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459416))
- Weak phone and Windows support (2 comments): "It's next-to-impossible to implement pass on every device everywhere and have all the same features on each client" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48226699)) "`pass` is a dumb idea if you have a phone or a Windows PC and want to access your passwords there" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50017133))
- Hard to share passwords (2 comments): "The existing tools (pass, sops, git-crypt) are close but they assume a single human identity." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47206838)) "which doesn’t have an easy way to share passwords" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47094870))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Bitwarden](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bitwarden.md): 278 recommend
- [1Password](https://hackerapproved.com/p/1password.md): 238 recommend
- [KeePassXC](https://hackerapproved.com/p/keepassxc.md): 131 recommend
- [Vaultwarden](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vaultwarden.md): 112 recommend
- [KeePass](https://hackerapproved.com/p/keepass.md): 100 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "pass password manager", https://hackerapproved.com/p/pass/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).